3/14/13

Ride In 3/14: Square Routes

FOR WHAR, WINTER? FOR WHAR?

It remains cold in middle March (Middlemarch?) in Washington (washing ton?), DC (Dee see?) and I hold this cold in contempt, or would if I had a sufficiently thick pair of gloves, and I'm well out of patience with regard to coping with it. I crave spring and for its gentile (or Jewish) breezes to pass over (or Passover?) me as I bask (or Basque?) in the banal yellowy warmth of an obliging sun. It makes for better bike commuting. If winter continues, I'll have no choice but to leave DC next week, which I will be doing anyway, so programming note: don't look for anything new on TFTS from Monday through Thursday and secondarily, don't look for anything new on TFTS today or tomorrow either because this blog is fairly repetitive anyway.

They say that the squeaky wheel gets the grease (Squeaky Weill Goetz the Greece? ok, I'll stop now) but the squeaky bike chain gets nothing from many bike commuters and that's a problem. Remember to occasionally lube your chain or better yet, come up with a way to say that without making my inner 7th grade boy both chortle and blush. I believe that Chortle & Blush is also the name of a chain middling haberdasheries.

 I encountered Dave and KidO on the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track and rode with them for half a block.

On 11th Street, I saw Ted and I yelled "hey, Ted" or some such thing and the words wafted from my bike lane, proving once and for all, that shouting is the best and surest form of communication and ought to be the primary method for conversing across vast distances. I've stopped using telephony (and telepathy) and other forms of technological enhancements and from this point forward only wish to broadcast my spoken words as far as my vocal cords allow. I'll tell you about it some time if you're sufficiently close.

What hustle some bike commuters demonstrate! What pointless and ineffectual hustle! But, hey, have at- I'm not going to tell you that it's pointless to ride really, really fast to the next red light only to have to wait there, standing idle, for the next minute waiting for the cross traffic to dissipate. I might, suggest, however, that one oughtn't let his (or her) desire to maximum speed impinge on the safety and well-being of others. I'd rather not have a pedestrian dive out your way only to thwack into me. Ride the way you want, but beware of cascading consequences and potential for collateral damage.

I rode by the Apostolic Nunciature and there was no banner that read "Under New Management," just in case you were wondering. Very few banners on Embassy Row in general, but some day the Incredible Hulk will establish diplomatic relations with the US and we'll be all much better for it. PROTOCOL SMASH.

"If you had to describe your bike commute as either a beer, a wine or a cocktail, which would you choose and why?" Questions like this could be found in my  forthcoming (perhaps too forthcoming) Big Book of Bike Commute Parlor Games if only such a book existed. HINT: the answer to every charade is "a person bike commuting"

Ended up riding around Ward Circle instead of making a left in the crosswalk before it, but I managed to make it through ok, even though it's not my preferred way. Traffic circles are a mess and that one is particularly daunting for cyclists and pedestrians (and drivers) and it'd be nice if it weren't a circle at all.

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